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How Fly.io and Tailscale Saved Notado

notado.substack.com

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Re: How Fly.io and Tailscale Saved Notado

#61

Post by dimgl »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #34

3000 users? You can save the data on disk and not worry about it. Get a vultr 5 dollar micro instance. I don't know why all these engineer driven businesses focus on the wrong things. You don't need fly.io. Of course they will tell you you need them, I don't blame them. But fly.io or kubernetes should always be done by a migration team which you can hire once you have insane profits. Yes profits, the other tiny detai…

110% this. For a small business with a small amount of users, I always suggest to *use the simplest thing that'll save you the most time and money to deploy your service*.

Re: How Fly.io and Tailscale Saved Notado

#63

Post by coconut08 »

CharlesW wrote: post #7
crawshaw wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thanks! we have a lot of work to do explaining tailscale. we’re working on it.

“Make any device anywhere part of your own private, secure network.”

"what's a network, how is it different from the internet, and why do i need to add a device to it?"

many people don't understand the implications of vpn'ing into their home devices. being able to access their network shares "over the internet" in a safe way. being able to access all of their random self hosted stuff without needing to be at home without needing a reverse proxy. all the while being easier to secure and safer than internet facing alternatives. these are things that people will actually understand that aren't just arbitrary abstract ideas.

Re: How Fly.io and Tailscale Saved Notado

#64

Post by capableweb »

mountainriver wrote: post #54
GiorgioG wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

K8s is a complexity sinkhole for 99% of companies. It's an insult.

Uh huh here we go. What other tool do you propose for running many containers with dependencies on one another? Or why should I target a bunch of different cloud APIs to make my tool consumable when I can target one?

First question: why you need many containers for just 3000 users? That should easily run on a cheap VPS unless you're doing something ridiculously complex.

Why target any cloud APIs at all if your product have a small amount of users? You don't need to scale up/down fast at if you're just at 3000 users. Throw it on a Linux box, write a systemd service and be done with it.

Re: How Fly.io and Tailscale Saved Notado

#65

Post by dgentry »

bmorton wrote: post #52

Quoted post unavailable.

For me it was trying to build an AWS Lambda function where I'd deploy a new version and visit the URL, then wait for the CloudWatch logs. And wait. And wait. It might only be two minutes but that is long enough for me to want some tea, maybe look at some other issue filed that morning and see if I can make progress in diagnosing it, and WHOOPS I GOT DISTRACTED FOR HALF AN HOUR.

fly.io is instantaneous. I deploy, I see the result, I fix it, I deploy again and figure out the next problem. It is a pleasant environment to develop in.

Re: How Fly.io and Tailscale Saved Notado

#66

Post by riwsky »

radicaldreamer wrote: post #17
throwthere wrote: post #14

I love Fly.io and use it in production, but unless I'm missing something the author would have been better off just running their kubernetes cluster locally on a $6 VPS on digital ocean. That would also obviate the need for the procfile hack and tailscale.

A lot of super sophisticated engineering goes into solving problems which were created by the engineers themselves and obviously didn't need to be. I remember hearing that Oscar (a health insurance startup whose main differentiation was having a decent app) ran their own mesos cluster for some reason creating tons of cost and complexity with little to no reason (also operated tons of microservices with startup headco…

Context (I work at Oscar):

Oscar (no longer a startup; IPO'd last year) ran their own mesos cluster for the same reasons anyone uses k8s today: to help teams deliver in parallel. "Startup headcount" can mean different things to different people, but the company employs hundreds of software engineers, and has been around for over a decade. Kubernetes was not an option when they hit those scaling constraints—but now that k8s has established itself so firmly, Oscar's moving to a managed k8s setup.

My experience before Oscar was mainly in a Spring monolith—which, yes, made some microservice overreaches pretty clear in my team's corner of the codebase—but even so, it'd be madness to coordinate all the org's development through e.g. a Jenkins instance and a bunch of ansible.

Re: How Fly.io and Tailscale Saved Notado

#67

Post by bsnnkv »

ipaddr wrote: post #59
bsnnkv wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can save the data on disk and not worry about it. I one day aspire to have the cajones of ilrwbwrkhv. For the reference of other potential solo devs, if done right, Fly.io will still be cheaper than the Vultr 5 dollar micro instance (or equivalent) with an incomparably better DX.

With the threat of a much higher bill if done wrong. That $2.50 vultr instance provides a lot more like 20 gigs of storage nevermind security of a fixed bill. You might be able to save a little, you might pay a lot more. Hedge your bet and use vultr.

I generally agree, though I would add that I think this depends a lot on the skill set and technical background of the person.

My gut feeling is that if someone is going to struggle with optimizing for a relatively fixed target like Fly (the billing is extremely predictable compared to some other offerings out there, if not completely fixed), the chances are that they won't be cut out to do double time taking on what is effectively a Linux sysadmin role.[1]

[1] I may be completely wrong

Re: How Fly.io and Tailscale Saved Notado

#68

Post by bsnnkv »

wooque wrote: post #57
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #34

3000 users? You can save the data on disk and not worry about it. Get a vultr 5 dollar micro instance. I don't know why all these engineer driven businesses focus on the wrong things. You don't need fly.io. Of course they will tell you you need them, I don't blame them. But fly.io or kubernetes should always be done by a migration team which you can hire once you have insane profits. Yes profits, the other tiny detai…

Quoted post unavailable.

I am happy to engage in discussion with critical comments made in good faith.

This comment however, with its unnecessary ad-hominem attacks, seems particularly mean-spirited. For this reason, I have flagged your comment.

Re: How Fly.io and Tailscale Saved Notado

#69

Post by bsnnkv »

indigodaddy wrote: post #60
bsnnkv wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not even the kubernetes cluster, the author eventually is just running multiple processes in a single VM it seems, and scaling vertically using the VM This is an excellent summary! > ... which of course could have been done on DigitalOcean. > However, people do seem to love the fly.io developer experience. It's a testament to fly.io that the auther seemed to enjoy spinning up on fly.io. It could have been done, but…

I’m thinking about a simple blog. Someone convince me that I should use fly.io and caddy and how/why deployment and subsequent blog/post updates would be easy and uncomplicated.

I'm afraid I couldn't make that argument with a straight face.

I would recommend that you go with something like Hugo[1], throw it on an S3(-compatible) bucket and be done with it.[2]

[1] https://gohugo.io/

[2] This is what I have been doing for my personal blog and for my wife's professional website for many years and I am very content with it

Re: How Fly.io and Tailscale Saved Notado

#70

Post by bsnnkv »

It's always an interesting time reaching the front page of HN.

As might be expected, Notado saw a huge surge in registrations, saved content and large batches of comment imports today; I'm happy to report that this "hug of death" was handled without breaking a sweat.

Thanks to all of you who provided your feedback, thoughts and engaged in good-spirited critical discussion with me here today. I don't take your time or your words for granted.

Unfortunately I'm starting to reach that "had enough internet for today" point[1] so I'm going to be signing off now.

I have already received a number of emails from people interested in specific parts of the Notado stack and how things work. If you would like to email me to ask about something specific, I'd be very happy to receive a mail from you: hello at notado dot app. I hope I can respond to your messages either bilaterally where possible or in further technical articles where appropriate.

De khuday p'aman!

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33240534

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